


Beauxbatons and Durmstrang headcanons

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, Gen, Headcanon, get a compass Dumbledore, history is a thing JKR, less than a week on wikipedia JKR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 06:52:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10871388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang Headcanons, also based on wikipedia history articles.  Less than a week of casual research, JKR.  LESS THAN A WEEK.





	Beauxbatons and Durmstrang headcanons

BEAUXBATONS:

When the Roman Curia, the administrative body of the Vatican, moved to Poiters with the Pope in 1305 and thence to Avignon in 1309, they brought with them several secretly-magical cardinals. These cardinals, most of whom had been some of the earliest members of the scholarly Franciscan and Dominican orders and were dismayed that the English of all people were pulling ahead in education, took the opportunity to establish a rival school in the manner of Hogwarts.

  
Due to this religious origin, the only classes at Beauxbatons for several decades were Astronomy (to calculate Easter and know when to pray), Latin, Healing (a combination of Potions and Herbology), and Theology whose focus changed depending on the politics between Headmaster and Professor. Etiquette was added in 1344, under the advice of a Seer, and with the coming of the Black Death in 1348 Beauxbatons' coffers grew fat on what today would be called research grants, coaxed out of French nobles and church funds.

  
(It is still debated whether the Seer truly foresaw the Black Death, or gave his advice based on the newly elected Pope's long experience in and well-known taste for the excesses of the French royal court.)

  
Beauxbatons did not enroll witches until 1478, firstborn sons until the 1520s, or serfs until 1790, this last being when serfdom in Muggle France was abolished rather than from any particular change in the school rules. And although it had broken away from its roots as a seminary-preparatory school when it began admitting witches, its curriculum retained mandatory religious classes until well into the 1800s. Even so, by the Triwizard Tournament in 1994 much of the student body was Muslim or non-religious.

  
Beauxbatons' educational structure was geared towards preparing students for French noble society, despite being cut off from it in 1689 and the monarchy being repeatedly abolished and restored for most of the 19th century, until Grindelwald.

And since this is a little incoherent, a timeline:  
1310 - Beauxbatons opens as a magical pre-seminary wizards-only school connected to the Vatican under the Avignon Papacy. Basically a pipeline to get magical priests out of non-inheriting sons. The curriculum was Astronomy, Latin, Healing, and Theology.  
1344 - Etiquette is added as the fifth class of the curriculum.  
1348 - the Black Death hits Avignon. Beauxbatons faculty make the school rich off the medieval equivalent of medical research grants.  
1377 - the Papacy and its attendant cardinals return to Rome, effectively abandoning the school. The Headmaster takes full administrative control.  
1378 - the Western Schism; two elected Popes. The French-elect returns to Avignon with his court, including the cardinals nominally in control of Beauxbatons. Said cardinals don't survive the year.  
1378-1478 - curriculum repeatedly revised to add Transfiguration, Charms, Magical Creatures, Battle Magic, etc.  
1428 - an outbreak of lycanthropy in the Western Alps triggers the first witch trials, as separate from heresy charges which had been common across Europe for centuries. The witch burnings would continue well into the 18th century.  
1429 - many students (and their mothers, aunts, and sisters) abandon the school to join Joan of Arc.  
1429-1453 - witches prove themselves repeatedly in war against the English.  
1453-1477 - witches agitate for admittance.  
1478 - witches admitted; Theology changed to Catechism.  
1520 - firstborn sons admitted.  
1689 - the Statute of Secrecy cuts Western European wizarding society away from the European nobility and royal courts. (And, incidentally, the Nine Years' War between France and England). French wizarding society continues to behave as if they are still fully integrated, save for military service, and the kings merely in another castle for the time being.  
1790 - serfs removed from Muggle legal code in France; children of former serfs admitted. Classism erupts violently, exposing foundations Grindelwald will build on through the 1930s and WW2.  
1942 - Grindelwald's forces, in conjunction with the Nazis, complete the occupation of France; Beauxbatons is closed for four years.  
1946 - Beauxbatons is reopened, its curriculum modernized and its internal social class system strictly abolished. No one has lesser-quality uniforms, meals, dorms, school supplies, or instructional programmes.

 

* * *

 

DURMSTRANG:

  
Durmstrang began as a Polish witches' yeshivot under the patronage of Mirtka, the eldest daughter of Esterka the Jew and King Casimir III the Great, in 1377. Almost immediately it became rumored to teach the Dark Arts, which was a great heaping load of anti-Semitic and misogynistic propaganda. Despite this, it grew rapidly, increasing its student body a hundredfold in a single century as it became the safest place in all Europe for Jewish witches to exist.

  
In 1495, an extra wing of the school was opened up for the study of Kabbalah, which necessitated allowing wizards to enroll. (Unlike later, "New Age" Muggle ideas of the past, these studies were open to both men and women.). They were limited to that wing and program of study, and could be refused based on familial status -- the ideal candidate of either gender at the time was married or not-recently widowed, without dependent children. It would take another full century for wizards to have access to the same education as witches.

  
Throughout the 1500s -- since 1517, with Martin Luther's 95 Theses against the Catholic Church -- Protestantism and internal politics put the Catholic Church and most of Christian Europe into a politico-religious panic. Durmstrang, under one of the tenets of Judaism -- "act against doctrine to save a life" -- opened its doors to Protestants, then Christian heretics, then politically-branded heretics, all of whom were at risk of their lives if they went to Catholic Beauxbatons and were refused by Hogwarts.*

  
By 1625, barely a century after the mass enrollment of Christians and political refugees at Durmstrang, the inmates took over the asylum, and its origin as a Jewish school was carefully wiped from the history books over the next several centuries... though nothing could change its reputation for Dark Arts, which it soon added to its curriculum under the pressures of its last official Muggle war.

  
The end of the 17th century saw Durmstrang churning out elite soldiers for the Great Turkish War, a conflict between the Ottoman Empire and most of the nations of Europe... except England, France, and the Scandinavian countries, all of whom signed the Statute of Secrecy halfway through the war, leaving Durmstrang and its students families the only source of magical firepower to combat the Ottomans. The lack of assistance from Western Europe and the high death toll soured what few relations there had been between the schools, and the 18th century opened to the Triwizard Tournament in an attempt to repair them.

  
The 18th century drew Russia into the candidate pool of Durmstrang students, as the Tsars turned Poland into a client state and then eliminated it entirely as a separate nation. The 19th began a mild influx of Central Asian magic as Durmstrang wizards raced ahead of Muggle Russian invaders to spread word of the Statute of Secrecy and warn local wizards to hide their powers. Most were shaman who'd been ignored as harmless under Islamic governments for centuries, though, and they treated the Durmstrang wizards as well-meaning but ultimately rather foolish guests under strong hospitality customs. The 20th century was marked by Grindelwald and the Voldemort wars: by the 1990s, much of Magical Eastern Europe's population was the descendants of Grindelwald survivors -- which itself was heavily skewed towards people who'd kept their heads down and paid lip service to his policies -- and "Dark" creatures fleeing persecution and Voldemort's join-or-die recruitment tactics.

  
The school retains sex-segregation for classes, dormitories, library use/study groups, and breakfast, but holds both formal and informal dances frequently as well as allowing intermixing for clubs.

  
The timeline!  
1377: Durmstrang is founded as a Jewish witches' school with royal funding  
1495: the Kabbalah program is opened; Jewish wizards gain limited enrollment  
1523: Protestants admitted to secular classes; Christian requirements added to campus life**  
1534: Other heretics admitted  
1538: Politically-outcast Catholics admitted  
1540-1590: Christian holidays slowly become the normal scheduled breaks  
1590-1615: Jewish-specific classes lose funding and instruction time; Kabbalah is incorporated into the Alchemy program  
1616: Jewish classes are removed from the curriculum; Judaic magic becomes a study group  
1620: Judaic study group goes covert for safety reasons, and remains so until well after Harry Potter's time  
1625: censoring of history books begins  
1689: the Statute of Secrecy signed in England and France; much of the rest of the continent was at war with the Ottoman Empire, including the wizards  
1699: Great Turkish War ends; Durmstrang and the wizarding nations in the Holy League sign Statute of Secrecy  
1700: the first Triwizard Tournament is held, and planned to continue once every four years.  
1744: high death rates and a mass loss of life among spectators ends the Triwizard Tournaments after only twelve have occurred.  
1750-1930: Central and North Asian magic is tentatively studied; off and on relations with Chinese schools of magic  
1893: Gellert Grindelwald enters school  
1896: Grindelwald expelled for experiments that nearly kill several classmates  
1930-1945: Grindelwald's reign of terror; Durmstrang is nearly depopulated as everyone but his supporters flee.

  
*For most of the 16th and 17th centuries, Wizarding Britain was in an economic and social crisis of goblin wars, royal paranoia, Scots-Irish-English wars, the same Protestant vs. Catholic problems of continental Europe, and the very beginnings of anti-Muggleborn sentiment which would later be attributed to Salazar Slytherin. The Hogwarts Headmasters weren't allowing in anyone the Hogwarts Charter didn't require them to, and even that much had deadly skirmishes erupting in the hallways every couple of years. Slytherin House was removed from the dungeons for nearly 150 years so they could be reconfigured into prisoner cells, and the House was only moved back after the Statute of Secrecy took the Muggle government out of the picture and things calmed down.

  
** in the 14th century, Christian requirements were not only Sunday services, Christmas, and Easter, but a massive calendar of holidays, saints' days,and dietary restrictions. This last custom is retained in some Western schools' "fish fridays" and restaurants adding fish dishes for Lent.

 

* * *

 

 

BONUS: THE MALFOYS:

  
The Malfoys were the last surviving wizarding Cathar* line. They fled southern France and the Catholic Church in 1329, just under a decade before the Hundred Years' War broke out, leaving behind their French surname and defiantly taking on the appellation "mal foi" -- bad faith -- for their heretical beliefs. The English did not welcome them warmly, and the family was considered highly suspect until Protestantism began nearly two centuries later. Even then, they only just skated by on allowing other wizards to assume they'd secretly converted to Protestantism before it was invented, via divination, rather than that they were Cathars.

  
The Malfoy family slowly forgot its religion as secularism took hold in the wizarding world, which itself was reactionary religious rejection during the height of the witch hunts in the 16th-18th centuries, and today they don't know what a Biblical testament is anymore.

  
No Malfoy has ever gone to Beauxbatons.

*Catharism, among other things, divides the New Testament God from the Old Testament one, and believes the Old Testament God is evil.


End file.
